Adam Czartoryski

Adam Jerzy Czartoryski (14 January 1770-15 July 1861) was the President of Poland (1830-1831), formerly the Chancellor of the Russian Empire (1804-1806).

Biography
Adam Jerzy Czartoryski was the son of Adam Kazimierz Czartoryski and Izabela Fleming, born in Warsaw in 1770. He fought for Poland-Lithuania in the War of the Second Partition of 1792, but he was captured by the Austrian Empire in Brussels and stripped of his titles. In 1795 he was summoned to Moscow, as Queen Catherine the Great saw use in him. She loved him so much that she restored his estates in 1796 and made him a gentleman-in-waiting. After Catherine's death he served as Ambassador to the Kingdom of Naples under King Paul I of Russia until his assassination in 1800, whereupon he served his son Tsar Alexander I of Russia.

In 1805, Czartoryski was responsible for signing a defensive alliance with Great Britain, Austria, and Prussia, and promised that Russia would give 135,000 troops to the Napoleonic Wars against expanding France. Czartoryski not only fought in the Third Coalition against Napoleon, but also led Russia into the Russo-Turkish War of 1805 (really two wars that were extremely close together), which saw Russian forces take over Moldova & Bessarabia from the Turks and also annex Wallachia briefly, but hand it back. In October 1805, Russian forces even laid siege to Istanbul and when Sultan Selim III of Turkey refused to accept Russian surrender terms, Fyodor Fyodorovich Buxhoewden's army stormed and sacked the capital, forcing the Ottoman sultan to come to terms.

Despite losing favor and his post in 1807, he was still close friends with Tsar Alexander. After Alexander's death in 1825 Czartoryski had no reason left to aid Russia and drafted the constitution of the Polish National Government during the Cadet Revolution of 1830-31. However, the revolt was crushed and Czartoryski fled to Great Britain. He founded the Literary Association of Friends of Poland while there in 1832. He died in Montfermeil, France in 1861.